Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

GAMING NEWS

Final Fantasy Being Used to Market Thief in Japan

The reboot of the classic stealth series Thief will debut in Japan this June. To prepare, Square Enix has started up its hype machine. Its method, however, seems a little bit dishonest. Shown above is a banner ad that Square Enix is using around the internet, which I screencapped while pretending to work.

The character you see there is the classic Final Fantasy thief, immediately recognizable to anyone who has played the original FF or a few of the others that use the job class system. It also says the title of the game in plainly legible English with the katakana "shiifu" underneath. It announces the release date and says, hey, we're gonna start uploading videos. The thief's battle options in that menu are nothing but steal, except of the bottom right option, which is "run."

I haven't played the Thief reboot, but I played the first PC title, and I certainly wouldn't say it's very similar to Final Fantasy. In fact they're about as different as it gets. I'd say this marketing is dishonest.

It's like Square is luring in gamers with an image they recognize and might have nostalgic feelings for, and then boom, they're looking at a website or trailer for a game that's completely different. Like the marketing team is sort of stealing from the web readers.

Wait... ooooohhhhh, okay. Now I get it. Cancel the eyerolls and fingerwags. False alarm.